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News of the Weird

Mark Nuckols, a business student at Dartmouth, has begun selling a tofu-like food, Hufu, that is flavored to resemble what he believes is the taste of human flesh. His target audience is those who already enjoy cooking with tofu, as well as any actual cannibals who might settle for artificiality in order to avoid legal problems and logistical hassles. Nuckols said he has never tasted human flesh but based his recipe on cannibals' reported descriptions of the flavor.

SMOKING: BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Smoke started rising from Israel's finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he was sitting for a radio interview in Jerusalem in May; he had stuffed his lighted cigar inside a pocket to comply with the room's no-smoking policy. Also in May, in Foreman, Ark., Jeff Foran, 38, suffered facial injuries when he leaped from a fast-moving car to retrieve his cigarette, which had blown out of a window. According to a state trooper, alcohol was involved in Foran's decision. And in New York City, a 28-year-old man fell to his death from a ninth-floor window sill in March, and police believe a gust of wind might have dislodged him while he was taking a cigarette break from an otherwise smoke-free apartment.

LETTING IN SOME FRESH AIR

Researchers from Technische University in Munich, Germany, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May, found that patients with migraine headaches were helped just as much by acupuncture needles stuck randomly into their bodies as by needles at the precisely prescribed pressure points.

NEWS JUNKIE

In July, Lindy Heaster of Woodbridge, Va., was assessed $21,290 for having bought two newspapers. She was a juror in a murder trial, ordered by the judge to avoid all media coverage. The judge ultimately declared a mistrial over Heaster's gaffe, voiding the conviction of Gerardo Lara and forcing the prosecutor to start all over.

iPOOP

British biochemist James Shippen and colleague Barbara May created the Indipod, supposedly the first portable toilet made for cars and tested it recently by traveling from Scotland to Italy without using any restrooms along the way. The Indipod, to be installed in the trunk, sells for the equivalent of $550.

I AM NOT A CROOK

In May 2005, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, physician Anthony DeLuco attempted to defend himself at a disciplinary hearing by proving, via an erection-inducing injection, that his penis was not, as a patient had charged, "crooked." The result was inconclusive; his erection curved upward, but wasn't "crooked" to the left or right. (The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons was, at press time, still deliberating his case.)

BRAZILIANS WAXED

In the course of a rare crackdown on Nigerian "419"/"advance-fee" scams, a Nigerian court in July sentenced a woman to 30 months in jail, plus fines, in a case in which the victim was not a gullible, e-mail-reading American, but a bank. Brazil's Banco Noroeste S.A. was apparently suckered into advancing money for a nonexistent new airport in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, which ultimately cost it $242 million (much of which it later recovered).

START 'EM YOUNG

The Massachusetts attorney general's office said in June that it was investigating whether longshoremen's unions working the docks in Boston have for years been putting some members' kids (as young as age 3) on their membership rolls, so that they will accumulate seniority and thus be eligible for higher starting pay if and when they work as longshoremen. And in India, children as young as 5 are working for police departments, according to a June BBC dispatch, because among survivors' benefits for the family of a police employee killed on duty is that a family member is given a department job, with the workload tailored to his or her abilities.

WHATEVER WORKS

A University of Birmingham (England) professor, working from a third-century Greek text of the New Testament's Book of Revelation, found that the number representing the Antichrist is probably not 666, but 616 (616 referred to the Emperor Caligula). A Church of Satan official in New York had no comment except to say that his church will use whatever number Christians fear.

SCISSORS CUT COMMISSION

In April, according to a New York Times story, when an art collector sought to choose between Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses to handle a sale (which ultimately brought in $17.8 million) and quixotically asked the two houses to play rock-paper-scissors for the privilege, Sotheby's lost out on the eventual $2.3 million commission by choosing paper. A Christie's executive quoted one of his 11-year-old daughters: "Everybody knows you always start with scissors." JUST

HAPPY TO SEE YOU

In April, off-duty San Antonio, Texas, police officer Craig Clancy went into a public men's room stall to answer a call of nature. As he lowered his trousers, his pistol dropped from his waistband onto the floor, firing twice, with one bullet nicking the leg of a man washing his hands nearby.

WITH FIVE, YOU GET EGG ROLL

Japanese customers who attempt to eat at one Western-style restaurant in Jilin, China (in the former Manchuria), will be turned away unless they first apologize for Japan's occupation of China during World War II. Japan's Kyodo news service, via a July Reuters dispatch, reported no apologies so far.